It’s time to really pay attention to the Central Coast, a region that spans roughly 250 miles, from Santa Barbara up to Monterey Bay, including the Santa Ynez Valley and San Luis Obispo County, among other regions.

During the economic recession and its aftermath, some restaurants and sweet shops in the region were hit hard by the rising cost of ingredients and cost-conscious customers, and forced to shutter their doors or scale back on business.

While the project has support from city officials, some residents and special interest groups continue their attempts to stall it. Regardless, plans for the casino move forward. 

Gaming facilities across the capital region are booming with expansions and new construction. Here’s a look at four new developments tied to local casino operations. 

Susan Jensen, executive director of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, offers her insight into the challenges facing tribal casino operations.

At Miyazaki Bathhouse in Walnut Grove, guests first wash themselves with soap using a bowl of water and a ladle, while sitting on a stool, before entering the tubs. “The tubs are not for cleaning,” Phillips says. “They’re for soaking.” 

Andy Stone, head mechanic for Team Novo Nordisk, prepares a bike during training camp for the Amgen Tour of California’s Sacramento stage in May. A Sacramento native, Stone attended Encina High School where he took a Regional Occupation Program bicycle mechanic class. He worked at bike shops for several years before getting into race mechanics.

Don’t have Fourth of July plans yet? How about a ski weekend … at Lake Tahoe?

That’s what Andy Wirth, CEO of Squaw Valley, is proposing after an historically snowy winter that surpassed 700 inches of snowfall this week. He’s so sure that this season’s snowfall will stick around, he’s hoping to stay open straight through the summer months and into the 2017-18 winter season.  

Sitting on the deck of his family’s tasting room, Warren Bogle looks out over the vineyard his grandfather planted in 1968 in the low-lying land of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. That first planting of 20 acres of vines in Clarksburg transformed the Bogle family from row crop farmers to one of the region’s most successful winemakers.

On this episode of Action Items, arts entrepreneur and restaurateur Clay Nutting joins Celestine Syphax to discuss what the grassroots art movement can learn from institutional arts organizations in the Capital Region — and vice versa.